Archive for December, 2011

Here we go again! Time to look at potential tech trends for the next year. While it has barely even snowed yet in Chicago nor really gotten that cold, it is definitely December.

This first set of tech trends comes from Jason Hiner at Tech Republic. He reported on the Gartner Group’s annual symposium where they revealed their list of the 10 most strategic tech trends of 2012. Drum roll, please:

Media tablets and beyond – the era of Microsoft and PC domination coming to a close

Contextual and social user experience – using information about an end user to improve the quality of the interaction with the device

Internet of Things – objects acting as user of other systems

App stores and marketplaces – a new term emerges: apptepreneurs

Next-gen analytics – mobile devices being able to self-analyze for full optimization

Big data – new and exotic technologies are required to manage the extreme volume of data created today

In-memory computing – faster response time in analytical operations

Extreme low-energy servers – new entrants to the server business proposing a radical way for future servers to work

Cloud computing – cloud computing was very recently number one and now is number ten. This is significant that it is viewed as not living up to its hype.

Pete Cashmore, the editor of Mashable, shares his list of the Top 10 Technology Trends for 2012.
As he points out, “Predicting what will happen in 2012, therefore, is a shot in the dark: A year is virtually a lifetime in the digital era.”

Touch Computing – we’ll be using our mice less often and increasingly using desktop computers in similar ways to how we use tablets and smartphones.

Social Gestures – ‘frictionless sharing’ – where with the click of a button you can share what you are doing from services like Spotify, to social networks (once you authorize it of course)

NFC and Mobile Payments – with the success of the Square Payment dongle for iPhone, and NFC (Near Field Communication) in 2011, awareness of this technology will likely make it more popular in 2012…it’s not without a lot of security concerns…

Beyond the iPad – the iPad costs $499′ the Kindle Fire is $199. There has been speculation that while the iPad is king today, it may lose the crown in 2012.

TV everywhere – with the rise of the tablet, it’s easier to have ‘TV in your hand’ but the cable companies have ways to keep you tethered to subscriptions.

Voice Control – thanks to the popularity of Siri and the iPhone 4S, voice recognition and voice search will show up on more devices.

Spatial Gestures – personally, I was fascinated with the technology in the movie Minority Report and hope I see it in my lifetime. Microsoft Kinect is an example of using spatial gestures in current technology.

Second-Screen Experiences – Cashmore says, “It refers to apps (mainly on the iPad) that listen to the audio output of your TV and display content related to the show or movie you’re watching.” An example from the music industry is Gracenote.

Flexible Screens – Can you imagine a phone that rolls up in your pocket, or one that you can slip into your wallet like a dollar bill? Bendable interfaces will be seen more in 2012, though it’s likely to not be fully implemented for a number of years.

HTML5 – this fifth version of HTML, could take the place of Flash on many mobile devices.

What are your predictions for 2012?

By the way, this blog post was written on an iPad using touch technology!

The Taubman Health Sciences Library at the University of Michigan will host the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s traveling exhibition, Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race. The exhibition illustrates how Nazi leadership enlisted people in professions traditionally charged with healing and the public good, to legitimize persecution, murder and, ultimately, genocide. Deadly Medicine, which is cosponsored by the University of Michigan’s Center for the History of Medicine, will premiere on February 3, 2012 on the 4th floor of the Taubman Health Sciences Library and runs through April 13, 2012.

Accompanying the exhibition will be an opening reception and closing reflections panel discussion. Event details will be announced at a later date.

“Deadly Medicine explores the Holocaust’s roots in then-contemporary scientific and pseudo-scientific thought,” explains exhibition curator Susan Bachrach. “At the same time, it touches on complex ethical issues we face today, such as how societies acquire and use scientific knowledge and how they balance the rights of the individual with the needs of the larger community.”Deadly Medicine is based on the acclaimed exhibition of the same name that opened at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., in April 2004. An online version is viewable at http://www.ushmm.org/deadlymedicine.

The Nazi regime was founded upon the conviction that “inferior races” and individuals had to be eliminated from German society so that the fittest “Aryans” could thrive. By the end of World War II, six million Jews and millions of others—among them Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), people diagnosed as hereditarily ill, homosexuals, and others belonging to ethnic groups deemed inferior—had been persecuted and murdered. Join us as we explore this dark chapter in history and its legacy on the health profession today.

NLM announces the expansion of the information available from PubMed Health (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/), which provides integrated access to clinical effectiveness reviews. PubMed Health specializes in reviews of clinical effectiveness research, with easy-to-read summaries for consumers as well as full technical reports. Clinical effectiveness research finds answers to the question “What works?” in medical and health care. It is a service provided by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM). (more…)

Inspired by Daniel Burnham’s Plan for Chicago, Municipal Pier No. 2, as Navy Pier was originally known, was built beginning in 1914 and opened to the public in 1916. It was designed to serve as a huge freight terminal to encourage lake shipping and as a gathering place for the people of Chicago, with an auditorium and an open-air promenade where citizens could attend carnivals or even free lectures given by the City’s Health Department. Lake shipping never took off as the city had hoped, and in 1927, to honor those who served in the U.S. Navy during World War I, Chicago changed the name of Municipal Pier No. 2 to Navy Pier.

In 1941, just months before America entered the war, the U.S. Navy transformed the Pier into a Naval Training School where about 60,000 men were trained. Pilots would fly from Glenview Naval Air Station and practice landing on air craft carriers by the Pier. Among them was future president, George H. W. Bush. In1946, the Navy turned control of the Pier over to the City of Chicago and the University of Illinois.

In 1944 Congress passed the “Servicemen’s Readjustment Act,” better known as the G.I. Bill, which offered subsidies for home purchases, business startup costs, hospitalization, and education. To meet the demand for education in Illinois, a new branch campus of the University of Illinois opened on Navy Pier on October 21, 1946. The Chicago Undergraduate Division (or CUD) was born.

A permanent campus was created at Harrison and Halsted, named the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle (UICC) and opened in February 1965. In 1982, the Medical Center and Circle Campus consolidated to form what we know today as the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC).

Earlier this year, Booth Library received a Technology Improvement Award from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Greater Midwest Region, under Contract No. N01-LM-6-3503 with the University of Illinois at Chicago. Booth Library provides services for programs in health physics, psychology, biology, health education, communication disorders, and nutrition. Booth also serves an online RN to BSN nursing program, and the library’s website is the only point of access to health information for these distance education nursing students. Along with programs directly related to heath and biomedical sciences, we serve the needs of our education students seeking information on school health and children with disabilities. We also provide general consumer health materials and reference services.